Why the Yuppie Elites Dismiss Bitcoin

so a few days back I recorded a I think four-part Bitcoin talk and I'm pretty sure nobody has heard about it yet I haven't listened to it but I was one of the things I mentioned in the conversation I was not a conversation just me talking but one of the things I mentioned was that it seems that the smart intellectuals of the world are dismissing Bitcoin and they kind of got me thinking about the why that is I basically had some thoughts around this topic but then I discovered another article that somebody has linked on Twitter that summarizes this much better than the I had kind of put together my own mind and I think it's very on point and probably the most accurate summary of what I think is going on and why some people are so dismissive of Bitcoin down right like hostile and others who are incredibly bullish on it so I thought I'd read this article and maybe comment on a little bit and you basically decide what you think for yourself so this article is written by let's see I don't know who wrote it actually it's on cit adel 21.com and this titled why the yuppy elite dismiss Bitcoin and it's a 13 to 16 minute read I don't know if I read all of it but let's start. So exacerbate it's exasperated with our conversation I asked bluntly why do you think the probability what do you think is a probability of Bitcoin hitting one million per coin without hesitation my friend replied 0.001% I laughed and said I put an 80% I asked if after a thousand of hours of research on my part maybe there was something there's some information a symmetry he quipped. or maybe self motivated leaves that's Dan he's one of my good friends from business school he's got a seven eighty on his GMAT and almost always the smartest man in the room we both worked on one of the. At one of the elite management consultant firms before attending one of the elite MBA programs followed by returning to elite job opportunities in most desirable cities in America. My B school friend group is full of dance the kids who ran the gauntlet of achievement obsessed America and cleared the highest bar every time it rose higher the constant yupp y elite. Yeah they're all resistant to Bitcoin it has become a topic of frustration frustrated fascination for me my other friend groups have largely heated my vociferous and. For a fervent testimony the Bitcoin is the most important asset of the turn for a century yet my elite MBA friends cling to the dismissiveness and the borders on the outright hostility why. This is a complex topics topic with few layers I will try to address here as a standing point let's introduce the closest attempt at the explanation that I've seen to date. And here he basically shows a graphic that's kind of a meme and tries to explain what's going on and on the graphic you see kind of a bell curve it goes it's title IQ bell curve. And it goes from presumably 0 to 145 at the on the right side and you have this graphic that's typically like a meme person one is like low IQ kind of like this really stupid looking character. And they think that the coins going to 250k okay then you have the middle of the bell curve IQ from like 85 to 115 or so or maybe you can say from 70 to 130 and these people are all raging and they're thinking like there's just no way that's going to 250 right. Let's let's get the raging dude meme and then the other end at the very right where the IQ goes from starting from about 120 to 145 plus like these are the geniuses of society and they're all thinking 250k plus as well they've got the he's got the brain on him and glasses and he's like the smart smart dude here. So continuing with the article clever and compelling this model explains what many in the Bitcoin perceive some of the smartest people in the world think Bitcoin is going to boom. But so but so do some dumb asses importantly this model also explains the mockery and resistance we see from our reasonably intelligent friends and family which I've also noticed myself by the way. But it's too easy an explanation I cannot claim to be smarter than Dan or the hundreds of other brilliant MBAs in my graduating class. Not one of whom has reached Bitcoin maximum as far as I know clearly there's something else going on here. I'm going to get some water real quick so I think kind of to recap the first part is there's a lot of people on different spectrum of the IQ smartness and you've got people on the very bottom who are kind of the moonboys are really excited about Bitcoin and they don't really think right they saw the Bitcoin did really well within the first couple years of its existence and they're just like blown away and like oh wow if it's done well it's going to continue to do well. Right but the past is not indicative of future results as we all know and then you have on the other spectrum of the IQ bell curve is the smartest people in the world who are also seen the possibilities right you got Elon Musk you've got. I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name correctly but all these kind of billionaire smart people rocket scientist sailor they all understand what's going on they see the future and it seems like really puzzling why do all these other people in the middle kind of there's still very smart but they're not quite as accepting of Bitcoin a lot of times like very hostile against it. So what else is going on here so after mulling this over for a number of months I think I've come up with a framework that while not perfect provides more explanatory power. First let's separate the 250k believers in Murad's meme is at the name but into what they really are Bitcoin moonboys on the left and deeply researched Bitcoin max on the right. In truth there are two different groups the first group believes that Bitcoin is going to the moon largely because they believe the past performance is indicative of future results. We'll say that this group subscribes to Bitcoin moonism and if you go on Twitter this is my side note if you go on Twitter and type Bitcoin hashtag you see a lot of these kind of Bitcoin moonboys like yeah to the moon. It's not as much anymore but in a lot like I'd say last three or so years especially around 2017 you had a lot of Bitcoin moonism going on and it was very very noticeable on Twitter on Reddit so it's kind of like it's as an intelligent person looking at that you're thinking wow these dumbasses what do they know. Okay so to the back of the article the second group has come to understand the game. Theoretic inevitability of bitcoins continue to rise in the context of central bank money printing the deterministic price mechanics of. Quadranial supply shock via bitcoins haveings and the market psychology that programmatic price appreciation precipitates and the winner takes all implications of an absolute scarce store value asset that we call Bitcoin maximum. The IQ framework seems to hold up decently with regard to the moonboys but it doesn't account for the dance. And all of the other brilliant yuppies I know when I thought about what is defining difference between Bitcoin maximum and the yuppy elite friends my yuppy elite friends. The surface level decisions that popped out were political example libertarianism trump support second amendment rights black lives matter. But these stem from a deeper divide the degree to which a person has trust in the system. There's a lifelong liberal recently cast into the nether world of distrust of both parties that one necessarily requires when journeying down the Bitcoin rabbit hole far enough I feel reasonably qualified to speak to the liberal condition. So basically what he's saying is you the degree to which you are bullish on Bitcoin is the degree to which you trust or distrust in the system. And the establishment whatever you want to call it. If you have trust in how things are in the way that they've been then you are less likely to believe in bitcoins kind of. But if you are in the other spectrum of where you distrust the system deeply you're more likely to absolutely love Bitcoin. But today begs the question like where do the billionaires the smart ones fall on the spectrum and I say billionaires and smart and somebody might let me listen to be like oh well Gene you know just because your rich doesn't mean you 're that smart and that's probably true. But a lot of the billionaires what they have in common is that they took gigantic risks and they bet large on something that most people wouldn't have bet on. I think that makes them somehow at least a little bit more open to some of the risk your slash. Society changing events and you know things that take place so let's get back to the article at the heart of liberalism . Is a belief that the system can work if it could just be architected well enough and administered competently and compassionately. My personal journey to Bitcoin maximumism involve the painful disassociation from this fundamental worldview specifically in the course of digging and to understand central banking monetary policy and the irreversible levers it resistible levers that come with it. As an aside I went to the best business school in the world and they didn't teach us anything about that for what it's worth I think I don't think that this was annoying or malicious a mission I think this battle was 100 years ago in King's day. With the self serving support of government weighing heavily on the outcome, which is to say my professors learn from canisians who themselves learn from canisians the business leaders and educators of today are completely unaware that their passing on the shoddy propaganda version of monetary theory as a result of largely successful ideological extermination of sound money theory. But I digress if we take more as IQ frameworks split the 250k believers into the respective groups and add the dimension of trust in the system's ability to work we get something like this. And what he's got what he's shown here is a graphic of basically just a quadrant on the top you have IQ and on the right you have trust in the system and it's color graded so on. On the bottom where you have low IQ you have propensity for Bitcoin monism and on the top where you have high IQ you have propensity for Bitcoin maximum. And the graph itself is kind of empty on the top right which correlates to high IQ and high trust in the system basically saying that if you have a lot of trust in the system and you're fairly intelligent you're not likely to believe or trusted Bitcoin. Okay and back to the article. If this is a reasonable representation of reality there are a number of insights we might draw from it. Bitcoin maximum maximum is correlated with intelligence but also distrust in the system. Someone who is very smart and has high conviction that the system is broken is more likely to reach Bitcoin maximum than someone lacking one of these qualities or all else equal. Bitcoin monism is less sensitive to one's distrust in the system if you're dumbass your dumbass but it probably helps to a little to be a dumbass and distrust the system. It's easier to reach Bitcoin maximum if you're already primed for a via pre-existing distrust of the system. This helps explain the early adoption of cypher punks, anarchists and libertarians and even the current represent ational skew toward Trump supporters who share a distrust of the establishment. On the flip side, I'm scrolling down here. It is more or less impossible to reach Bitcoin maximum and retaining any amount of trust in the system. Indeed, this was my experience. To get to maximumism, I had to first grapple with the uncomfortable distance of my beliefs and the things that came to face. I came face to face with as I dug deeper into the rabbit hole, confront them rather than turn back and ultimately tear down my entire worldview in order to resolve the distance and continue to go. Of greatest relevance to our particular focus, however, is the white space in the top right quadrant. Those with high intelligence and trust in the system's ability to work are very unlikely to subscribe to either Bitcoin maximum or Bitcoin monism. Let's expand on this further. So, basically exactly what I just said about the chart. The smarter you are and the more trust you have in the system, the less likely you are to partake and to entertain Bitcoin, I guess. The upper right quadrant of the chart also happens to be the naive home of the AP elite. To succeed in the educated professional class, you have to be smart, but it's also crucial that you know how to fit in be a good team player. Navigate industry politics, be polite and likable, and above all, be a good food soldier willing to sacrifice for your employer. The requisite core belief to be able to be able to be all of these things is trust in the system. Trust is that trust that if you're a good employee and play nice with others, you'll be rewarded via promotions and social standing. In this sense, if we were to plot the AP elite live on our graph, live lives on our graph, it would look something like this. The graph is IQ to top trust in the system on the right, and in the upper right with high IQ high trust, you have the AP elites, MBAs, etc. In just the same way that Bitcoin maximalists are some combination of smart and distrusting of the system, the AP elite are typically smart and trusting of the system. Some are more brilliant than others, but the ones that are less smart still successfully are typically so because they 're exceptionally committed and loyal employees. So I think for me, that does describe a lot of the people that I know personally as people who are smart, and they might not be necessarily brilliant enough to, you know, found new companies and to kind of reach other academic heights. But they're smart enough that they know what's good for them in terms of career choices, and they make their appropriate career choices and usually end up being fairly well off as a result. So, back to the article, as you can see the empty corner of our two by two matrix is exactly where the MBAs and other AP elites are, from their vantage point belief in Bitcoin is a peculiar phenomenon that will surely go away. None of their AP elite friends believe in it, and since they don't know much about Bitcoin, they draw the distinction between Bitcoin, they don't draw any distinction between Bitcoin, Buddhism, and Bitcoin maximal ism. It's all lumped together for them. As a result, the AP elite tend to believe to view belief in Bitcoin like this. So we've got our quadrant chart two by two matrix, and it's still showing the AP elites at the top, but it's labeled as people in the know, and everybody else is like people not in the know. So the basically is kind of like in the lead form of seeing yourself as somebody who knows and understands versus everybody else who doesn't quite know or understand what's going on. And it's not necessarily like, "Yeah, I know better." It's more like you're never exposed to anybody with other belief systems, right? And here we go, down below. Unfortunately for them, this perspective makes them unlikely to seriously consider Bitcoin on its own merits. Part of what makes this this interest so resilient is that it falls into a neat heuristic pattern like many other things in the yuppie world. The yuppie elite are accustomed to having the best information, the best education, the quickest knowledge of and access to trends. Yuppies believe they're people in the know. When you're in the ivory tower, you think the term ivory tower is a silly misrepresentation of your very normal life . But when you're no longer in the ivory tower, you realize how willfully out of touch you were with the world. I'm going to pause here for just a second, and I just kind of want to wait in some of the evidence that I've discovered of this. I frequently hang out in a Bitcoin maximalist room. You have their people who are very, very intelligent, who run their own companies, who have run institutions, who are, who have graduated from some of the world's elite schools. So these are clearly very smart people and have become Bitcoin maximalists. But before they became maximalists, they share their stories of typically in this room people ask, "Well, how did you get into Bitcoin?" And a lot of people share their stories. And what they describe for the most part kind of falls in line with what this person in the article is saying is that they were part of the world where looking outside and seeing Bitcoin as a movement just seemed like a scam and like insane, wishful thinking. Look at these ignorant people, like what do they know, right? But then as they did the research on the subject, as they understood what Bitcoin has accomplished on a very revolutionary level that most people don't quite understand . When they discover those things, usually through reading, through podcasts, through articles, and then doing their own thinking, right? They're smart people. And once they do take the journey and they start comparing the knowledge that they had to the knowledge that they've acquired, it becomes clear that Bitcoin is the only, you know, everything that they assumed was false is actually true. Like, it becomes clear that Bitcoin has merit and it needs to take serious consideration. And, you know, they do the homework and then they end up being Bitcoin maximalists. So, when I was reading this, I was like, "Aha, that's exactly what I heard in many of these rooms where people describe their journey going from a fairly knowledgeable person in the know to Bitcoin maximalists just by doing all the research without ignoring kind of the... You know, but here, I'll pause there because I think the article does a really great job explaining that here, for example. So, part of being in the ivory tower means being in a socially insular bubble, interacting only with other yupp ies, the natural outcome of this is that you tend to believe things are important And worthwhile if other yuppies in your social network believe they are, after all yuppies are the people in the know. Conversely, if people outside of the yuppies social world are engaged in something, but other yuppies aren't interested in it, in it, it must be something for people not in the know. In this case, the lack of belief in Bitcoin among the yupp ily, combined with a significant interest in Bitcoin among the non-yuppies, none yuppies, triggers a clear pattern recognition response . Bitcoin is for people not in the know. And I think it's important to note that none of this is very straightforward and intentional if you're the person " in the know" because to you, you interact with others who are like you, and I found this to be absolutely true. You usually hang out with people in your circle who are of about same intelligence, right? You don't hang out with people who are a lot dumber than you. Once you hear them talk, you're like, "Well, I'm not going to listen to them." Or people who are a lot less successful than you, they're usually about same social standing, plus or minus here and there. And once you're interacting with people of the same caliber , it tends to be difficult to listen to anybody else, especially if they're less successful and seemingly less intelligent. You look up to people who are a lot more successful than you, right? People, the elite, quote unquote, "yuppies" here, they look up to Buffett to monger, to all these investors who are Ray Dalio, who have clearly achieved great success. And they also distrust a Bitcoin, right? So yeah, let's continue. A second characteristic of yuppies also helps ensure that this haristic label is not easily revised. As smart people who are good at navigating the world, yupp ies need to understand something in order to believe in it, make sense. That's how they've done well in life so far. So that's what they're sticking to. Ironically, it's adherence to the central ethos of Bitcoin that yuppies keep the keep the yuppies from investing in Bitcoin. And that ethos is don't trust, verify. I have a childhood friend who is a sailboat captain for a living. In his mind, I am one of the smartest people he knows. When I strongly recommended that he look into Bitcoin, he bought some that same night. He didn't verify my thesis for himself, he trusted me. The same is not true for my yuppie friends. They know it is unwise to invest money in something they do not understand. At the same time they lack the time, conviction and persistence to replicate my years of research. What's more, Bitcoin's surface level provides it with a subtle camouflage. The first hour or two of learning about Bitcoin triggers a multitude of scam red flags for the business and the financial elite who have honed their heuristic abilities for filtering out the knowledge of noise they sift through on a daily basis in order to be effective in their professions. These red flags are a non-starter. So, I find this to be kind of true for myself. When I first started looking into Bitcoin, I had so many objections. I'm like, well, that won't work, that won't work. This is absolutely false, that's nonsense. And the more you dig into it, some of those kind of objections go away. And I've realized recently as well, I'm not realized, but I 've noticed that the people that are entering this space after so many years of hesitation are going through the same journey. This journey doesn't go from zero to one. It's not an off to on position flip. For most people, it's like a multi-touch journey. You have to first enter it, then you dismiss it, then you kind of go back to it and think, "Yeah, maybe there's something to it." But then you get burned, maybe you realize it might be a scam. Everything looks like a scam, a bubble, a pond, you're a scheme. But then you eventually, you know, you can't ignore the prices going up. You can't ignore other market entrants. And you think, well, why are they doing this? What do they know? Or what do they think they know that I don't know? I've already been doing this, you know, looking into this for a very long time. Why are they entering this space with so much money behind it? So they start doing more research and then listen to more podcasts, more books, more articles. And then they come to realization that they've been dumb this whole time. And it's not that they were just dumb. It's a journey that takes time. And you can see it very clearly from people who are clearly very smart, but I took them a very long time to get into Bitcoin. For example, Elon Musk noted, and I think his clubhouse interview that he knew about Bitcoin since I think 2013. Somebody had told him about it. And there's no doubt somebody who is of that intellectual capacity would not. There's no doubt that they wouldn't look into Bitcoin, at least a little bit, right? Maybe they dismissed it right away as magic internet money, but they it was on their radar for this whole time. And he said that, you know, he knew about it for a long time, but he didn't get into it until now. Like Tesla is, Tesla is invented and invested in it. And he, I don't know if he believes in Bitcoin itself, but he believes that crypto is possibly the future. And you can also see this in other CEOs that come out and write letters to shareholders. And they basically describe the same journey. At first, it seems like a scam. There's all this in efficiency and energy and mining. But as they dig deeper and they talk to participants of the market, people who are of equal intellectual capability, who are actually solving the problems like of mining and efficiency. Then they realized that there's a lot more to it that they didn't quite understand. And they kind of start putting more and more into it. And I saw back to the article here, for their entire adult lives, they have been reinforced to think within the box, often calling it out of the box thinking and not Iraq. The people who think they're thinking outside the box are actually within their own little box. It's like two containers, right? You're inside the little one and you think you're thinking outside that which you are maybe, but then you're inside another larger container, which is like your social circles. And you're upbringing, you're understanding of things. And by the way, the reason I'm interested in all this is because I'm always looking for ways to step outside of my own core beliefs. Because I think it's really dangerous to think that you know something really well and to completely dismiss other people's ideas. That's why I always try to keep an open mind to everything. No matter how absurd it sounds, you have to investigate things based on fact. And maybe your facts do not support the statements and you go look for other facts. Like you have to discover, you have to dig deeper into something solidified in your opinion. Okay, so for the entire lives they've been reinforced, we already said this. The odds that a new piece of information comes along for which an hour or two investigation creates more confusion than answers. Maybe yield several red flags, but actually turns out to be an outstanding investment are eventually small. That's what heuristics do, filter out the garbage based on the cursory investigation of substance. A typical member of the Yuppie lee flag slides Bitcoin as garbage to be ignored upon their first investigation of merits. And because of the group think of Yuppie's only paying attention to what other Yuppies are interested. That's where Bitcoin remains. And if you listen to Michael Saylor, he said the exact same thing. At first glance, he said Bitcoin was a scam. I'm guessing he did some little bit of an investigation and on the surface level, it does look like a scam. It sounds impossible. It seems like a get rich quick scheme. Maybe it's a pyramid scheme, whatever. That's what I feel like. And he even tweeted saying Bitcoin was a scam. And somebody had asked them, I think, on CNBC, like, why did you say it was a scam? And now you're all in on it. I think he's like 90% into it. And he basically said the same thing that this article summarized. He said he started digging into the research, started trying to understand what's going on. And then he used his own background as a rocket scientist to tie it all together to try to understand it. And now he has fermented such a strong core belief in Bitcoin that he's almost all in on it. Okay, back to the article. Let's see how far is this? I think it's almost down. Oh yeah, it's only two paragraphs. Of course, this will all change as Bitcoin's mechanics continue to play out, making numbers go up. In time, everyone will have to face the painful realization that their reason for right enough Bitcoin were wrong. Because of the dynamic dynamics at work with the Yuppi class, it may take longer for them to come around to Bitcoin the most new technologies or trends. Croatia was a Greek king of Lydia, like Lydia, modernly Turkey. 2,500 years ago, most notable for being the first to mint standardized gold coins a monetary breakthrough. Nowadays, he writes about Bitcoin after the lack. Wait, who writes about Bitcoin? Nowadays, he writes about Bitcoin after lack of fulfillment as a management consultant led him to stumbling down. Okay, I don't really understand that part. But I think what he's saying here in the final two paragraphs is that it's difficult to accept a paradigm shifting. Discovery as truth, if all you've known your whole life is a certain truth. Let's give a quick example here. I'll summarize in this long talk. So let's say you are a villager. You grew up, you were born into a village in the 1500s, let 's say. Your village was located at the foothills of a volcano. For the entirety of the history that you are exposed to that you know of, your relatives, your ancestors have recorded their lives, you have maybe a clay tablet or something. And there's absolutely no mention of volcanic eruptions. So for the life of you or anybody that you know, nobody's ever been exposed to a volcanic eruption. So you think, well, you know, you don't even think about it . It doesn't even come up to you. It doesn't come up across your mind that perhaps this thing is going to erupt one day and you're going to be screwed and all wiped out, right? Doesn't ever cross as your mind because you've never been exposed to it. So you continue living in your own little world. And then one day the volcano erupts and you're all gone. Just boom. It burns to a crisp, right? But you know, like you're thinking, but wait, you know, that has never happened before. Why is it happening now? So that's kind of what I'm thinking along the lines here. Another example I want to give is when I moved to Japan, obviously I was aware of the 2011 March earthquake and tsunami that took place here. It was history making, you know, it was life changing and positive, most negative way for people. And I remember watching the videos of the tsunami. If you go on YouTube, there's a ton of them. And one of the most horrifying videos that I saw was this sludge of houses, cars, boats, everything. Really, really tall, just come through a valley of village, wipe everything out. This was all in video people on the hill filming it. It's basically the entire village floating in this sludge of just death, pure death. There's no way to survive any of it. And I thought, wow, you know, if you were stuck in any one of those buildings, you'd be wiped out. That's it, you'd be dead. And I remember seeing the aftermath, somebody actually went in and recorded. After they've kind of cleaned everything out, they've recorded the same valley. And the only thing that was standing in that valley was the tallest building. I think it was a hospital. And only the topmost floor and the roof were untouched. Everything else the sludge went through. So if you were not in the topmost floor of the hospital or on the top of the roof, you were likely dead. And then that made me kind of gravely concerned, given that I live on the coast of Japanese city. And I said to my wife, we need to be prepared for this sort of thing. If this ever happens here, we need to be able to evacuate very fast. And of course she said, well, you're being paranoid. This has never happened here. For the history of this place, this has never happened here . So in her mind, it is impossible for a tsunami to hit this coast in this part of Japan, even though the entire coast is exposed to earthquake activity. So I'm like, how could you possibly think that something couldn't happen here just because it has never happened? And I think that's the case with a lot of Bitcoin people who are exposed to it. They can't possibly fathom a world where we are not constantly printing money, where debt is a given thing, where everything is constantly inflated and goes up and up and up. They can't imagine that world because they have never known anything other than that world. So I think the biggest takeaway from all this is don't get hung up on one or two things. When you first start researching something, question a deeper and further, listen to people of all backgrounds. Try to do your own research. That's all I'm saying. It's like, keep an open mind. Especially when it comes to technological advancements because on the surface level, they may look dumb, they may seem like a nonstarter, but a lot of times those are the types of things that changed the world. And we just need to have an open mind to them initially. So yeah, I found this article very good. Again, it's called "Why the Yuppie Lead Dismiss Bitcoin" by Citadel21.com. Check it out. I hope you had fun. Sorry for my mispronunci ations and refreading that times. Alright, peace. [BLANK_AUDIO]